Beat the eggs and the caster sugar until light and fluffy. Put the butter and cocoa powder in a small pan and heat gently, stirring until the butter melts and the mixture combines (you can also do this, very gradually, in the microwave using short bursts), then stir in the egg mixture. Fold in the flour.

Pour half of your brownie mixture into the tin. Make sure the bottom of the tin is coated completely. Spread out the squares of chocolate caramel on top of this layer. Cover the chocolate layer with the remaining brownie mixture. These steps are shown in the following photos:

Bake for 40 – 45 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin.

You might like to simply cut up the brownies into rectangles/squares. In honour of Valentine’s Day, I used heart-shaped cookie cutters to shape the brownies. This is what they looked like before decorating:

I then made buttercream using 85 g (3 oz) butter and 170 g (6 oz) icing sugar (I had quite a bit left over to freeze, so you could get away with less). I added half a teaspoon of strawberry flavouring to the buttercream and also some pink food colouring. You can also make pink buttercream with a natural flavour by using strawberry or raspberry purée, as I did in my raspberry ripple sponge cake recipe.

I cut each of the heart shaped brownies in two horizontally to make two layers. I piped a layer of pink buttercream (using a small star tip) between the layers. Finally, I dusted with icing sugar.

As always, brownies are extra delicious when served warm with some vanilla ice cream! 🙂

To get the icing sugar heart on top of the brownies, I drew around a mini heart shaped cutter on some paper, then cut out the heart to create a mask. Lay the mask over the brownie and dust with icing sugar.